In 2007 the Center for American Progress released its report “Future Choices: Assisted Reproductive Technologies and the Law,” which described a range of assisted reproductive technologies and their legal and regulatory background. The report also examined the policy implications of the largely unregulated field of reproductive technology, especially in the context of traditional feminist positions on reproductive rights. If a woman has the ultimate right to decide whether or not to bear a child when she is pregnant, for instance, does that principle hold true when she would like to become pregnant with the use of specific embryos? Is surrogacy a noble pursuit undertaken by autonomous, well-informed, and altruistic women, or is it a practice that exploits the low-income and vulnerable?

09/24/2013

Sometimes the way an issue is framed matters as much as the facts. Take the so-called battle between marriage equality and religious liberty. Many activists against marriage equality claim that the two are inherently opposed to each other. According to their argument, if one side wins, the other loses.

The problem with this oppositional framing is that it isn’t true. In reality, marriage equality and religious liberty can support and strengthen each other. And this is true even when people are conflicted about same-sex marriage. Even then, they still believe that gay and lesbian couples should be treated fairly under the law.

Last week Third Way and the Human Rights Campaign released a national poll that validates these views. According to the poll, a majority of Americans support marriage equality and religious liberty, rather than believing that one threatens the other.

The poll also shows that a majority of Americans support nondiscrimination laws regarding gay and lesbian people and are opposed to any new laws that would deny them services. As for religious exemptions, a majority of Americans believe they should be limited to houses of worship and clergy.

09/16/2013

At a recent hearing, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Judge Advocate Generals of the Armed Forces testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on various proposals to combat sexual assault in the military. Testimony was offered in the wake of the release of the Defense Department’s annual report showing that despite the military’s efforts to ramp up sexual assault prevention programs in recent years, rates of sexual assault in the military climbed by 34 percent between 2010 and 2012. A total of 26,000 service members are estimated to have experienced unwanted sexual contact in 2012 compared to 19,300 in 2010. Moreover, less than 3 out of every 100 estimated sexual assaults in the military in 2012 were ever prosecuted—a shockingly low percentage that has shown no sign of improvement.

Last month two high-profile cases involving sexual assault prevention personnel raised grave concerns about the credibility of those in charge of the military’s sexual assault prevention program. The head of the Air Force’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office, Lt. Col. Jeffrey Krusinski, was arrested for alleged sexual battery of a woman in a parking lot. In a separate incident, a noncommissioned officer who was tasked with sexual assault prevention at Fort Hood is under investigation for sexually abusing his subordinates.

09/09/2013

Endnotes and citations are available in the PDF version of this issue brief. Download the report: PDF Read it in your browser: Scribd

Coming out of the 2012 presidential election, women’s role in determining its outcome—the so-called gender gap—was a dominant narrative. Women played a large part in President Barack Obama’s re-election, with 55 percent voting for him compared to 44 percent supporting his Republican rival, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

A parallel narrative last November was that of the potential of the rising electorate—the demographic populations that are increasingly becoming larger segments of the voting-eligible population—influencing election outcomes. Women of color are a particularly important demographic because they stand at the center of the intersection between the rising electorate and the women’s vote.

09/06/2013

California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed the landmark School Success and Opportunity Act, or SSOA, into law, making it clear that California public schools have a responsibility to ensure that all of their students—regardless of their gender identity—can access school-based resources. While several of California’s largest school districts had already adopted gender-inclusive policies prior to the bill’s passage, many of the state’s nearly 1,000school districts unfairly separated transgender students from their peers or required them to enroll in and attend classes that conflicted with their gender identity. The SSOA clarifies the state’s existing nondiscrimination law and protects some of the most vulnerable members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, or LGBT, community.

Policies and practices that misidentify or segregate transgender youth from other students contribute to the already high rates of bullying, discrimination, and harassment that transgender students face nationwide. A 2010 study by the National Center for Transgender Equality and the Gay and Lesbian Task Force found that nearly 60 percent of transgender and gender-nonconforming students reported being bullied or assaulted in school because of their gender identity. This level of harassment and violence leads to both immediate and long-term adverse outcomes for the students, including disproportionately high rates of suicide, homelessness, and illness.

09/04/2013

In 1973 the Supreme Court decided in the landmark case Roe v. Wade to recognize the constitutional right to abortion for all women. Forty years later, however, this guarantee remains an empty promise for thousands of poor women and women of color thanks to the Hyde Amendment, an annual appropriations measure first passed in 1976. This provision intentionally discriminates against poor women by prohibiting Medicaid, the health-insurance program for low-income individuals and families, from covering abortion care.

Because of the intersection in our country between race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, this restriction also has a disproportionate impact on women of color. Due to a number of root causes related to inequality, women of color are more likely to qualify for government insurance that restricts abortion coverage, more likely to experience higher rates of unintended pregnancy, and less likely to be able to pay for an abortion out of pocket. The Hyde Amendment therefore does not only undermine gender equity, but it also violates principles of racial and economic justice.

The Hyde Amendment discriminates against poor women

Congress passed the Hyde Amendment in order to deny poor women access to abortion. Former Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL), the law’s sponsor, admittedduring the debate of his proposal that he was targeting poor women. “I certainly would like to prevent, if I could legally, anybody having an abortion, a rich woman, a middle-class woman, or a poor woman,” he said. “Unfortunately, the only vehicle available is the … Medicaid bill.”

09/03/2013

Each year the United States commemorates Equal Pay Day to illustrate the gap between men’s and women’s wages. Data show that women still earn 77 cents to every dollar a man earns. This gender-based wage gap stubbornly remains despite the passage of the Equal Pay Act in 1963 and a variety of legislation prohibiting employment discrimination.

The wage gap is even greater for most women of color including Asian American women. Asian American women make 87.6 percent of what the average man earns and 73 percent of what Asian American men make. Pay equity is therefore crucial to the economic advancement of Asian American women, as well as their families and communities.

Here are 10 numbers that demonstrate why pay equity is important for Asian American women and their families.

1. $770: The median weekly earnings for Asian American women in 2012. Asian American women might show the smallest gender gap, but it is growing. Asian American women’s earnings dropped from 86.6 percent of all men’s earnings in 2010 to 84.8 percent in 2011.

08/30/2013

Unlike every other federal judge, the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court are not governed by a code of judicial ethics. Chief Justice John Roberts has defended the justices’ decision to exempt themselves from the ethical rules. Because the justices are members of the highest court in the federal system and are exempt from the rules other federal judges must adhere to, the question arises: Who judges the justices?

This question also arises with respect to state supreme courts, but in a number of states, the need for strong judicial-ethics rules is of the utmost urgency. Because state court judges are elected and many justices must raise large campaign contributions to keep their jobs, the ethical rules that prevent conflicts of interest are crucial to ensuring that the public views the judicial process as fair and legitimate. Justice cannot be seen as having a price tag.

North Carolina has managed to address this problem by creating a system in which complaints against its high court justices are heard by a panel of judges from the North Carolina Court of Appeals. But a bill recently passed by the state legislature—H.B. 652—would transfer the authority to investigate the justices away from the panel of judges to the high court justices themselves. At the same time, another bill passed by North Carolina lawmakers—H.B. 589—will open the floodgates to campaign cash from corporations and lawyers who may want the justices to rule a certain way, which will certainly raise more questions about conflicts of interest.

08/26/2013

Endnotes and citations are available in the PDF version of this issue brief - Download the report: PDF Read it in your browser: Scribd

“One has to fight for justice for all. If I do not fight bigotry wherever it is, bigotry is thereby strengthened. And to the degree that it is strengthened, it will thereby have the power to turn on me.” – Bayard Rustin

Most Americans who have heard of Bayard Rustin know him by the historical taboo of his identity—that he was both black and gay—and as the man who orchestrated the landmark 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, more popularly known as the March on Washington. But the individual behind these labels was so much more complex, and his impact within and beyond the civil rights movement was much more profound than this description suggests.

The radical nature of Rustin cannot be underscored enough. To be a not-so-closeted gay man and thrive in the conservative upper echelons of black society during the 1930s, ‘40s, ‘50s, and ‘60s was indeed remarkable. His lifetime of navigating race and sexuality—his “time on two crosses,” as coined by George Chauncey Jr. in his interview with Rustin just before his death in 1987—is iconic for LGBT people of color today, who find inspiration in his story as they wrestle with many of the same cultural and political dichotomies that he faced.

President Barack Obama pledged during his January 2013 State of the Union address that the United States would join with its allies to “eradicate” extreme poverty over the “next two decades” by connecting more people to the global economy and empowering women.

Putting an end to extreme poverty requires providing opportunities for all individuals, especially women, to thrive through education, nutrition, and health. In order to achieve this goal, a greater emphasis must be placed on gender equality and the removal of barriers that disproportionately affect women.

A great deal of progress has been made in the fight against poverty, particularly since the adoption of the U.N. Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs, in 2001. From 1990 through 2008, the number of people worldwide living in extreme poverty fell by more than 800 million. Yet barriers to prosperity still remain—such as inequality and discrimination against marginalized populations—and new challenges continue to emerge that impede goals to reduce poverty.

10/20/2011

The Institute on Assets and Social Policy and the national policy center Demos released a report revealing that only four percent of Latino seniors and eight percent of African-American seniors have the resources to maintain economic security for the duration of their lives. The report, "The Crisis of Economic Insecurity for African-American and Latino Seniors," underscores how the nation's seniors were experiencing declining economic security even before the Great Recession.

While only one in four white seniors currently have adequate resources for a secure retirement, the disparity between whites and people of color reveals that, for seniors of color, retirement insecurity is the norm and security is the exception. This report looks to the history of racial discrimination in the housing and labor markets to explain this condition of insecurity among seniors of color: the extensive practice of redlining, segregation and workplace discrimination has inhibited the ability of today's seniors of color to accumulate the asset wealth needed for a secure retirement. Inequality experienced over the course of one's lifetime is compounded in later years and can continue with ripple effects over generations..

In response to these findings, the report makes the following recommendations:

--Ensure the strength and adequacy of the Social Security program.

--Sustain funding for senior support services, which help seniors meet basic needs.

10/19/2011

A Tennessee high school student says his principal verbally and physically harassed him because of the T-shirt he was wearing—a homemade shirt showing support for stalled efforts to create a Gay-Straight Alliance at the school.

For months, Chris Sigler—a straight, 17-year-old student at Sequoyah High School whose sister is bisexual and has been subject to bullying—and others have tried to create GSA club but have been blocked by the seemingly discriminatory Principal Maurice Moser, who told the blog Talk About Equality that discussions about forming the club were “disrupting the educational environment.”

Then earlier this month, Sigler wore a T-shirt to school that read: “GSA: We’ve got your back.” Here’s how the ensuing scene reportedly transpired, according to ABC News:

Last Tuesday, a teacher told Sigler to cover up the shirt, but he resisted and wore it again on Friday. Moser ordered all the students out of the classroom, according to the Siglers, except for his sister Jessica, who refused to leave her brother.

Both students allege that Moser then grabbed Sigler’s arm, shoved him and chest-bumped him repeatedly while asking “Who’s the big man now?”

A Tennessee high school student says his principal verbally and physically harassed him because of the T-shirt he was wearing—a homemade shirt showing support for stalled efforts to create a Gay-Straight Alliance at the school.

For months, Chris Sigler—a straight, 17-year-old student at Sequoyah High School whose sister is bisexual and has been subject to bullying—and others have tried to create GSA club but have been blocked by the seemingly discriminatory Principal Maurice Moser, who told the blog Talk About Equality that discussions about forming the club were “disrupting the educational environment.”

Then earlier this month, Sigler wore a T-shirt to school that read: “GSA: We’ve got your back.” Here’s how the ensuing scene reportedly transpired, according to ABC News:

Last Tuesday, a teacher told Sigler to cover up the shirt, but he resisted and wore it again on Friday. Moser ordered all the students out of the classroom, according to the Siglers, except for his sister Jessica, who refused to leave her brother.

Both students allege that Moser then grabbed Sigler’s arm, shoved him and chest-bumped him repeatedly while asking “Who’s the big man now?”

It’s no secret that some of the most common burdens in the daily lives of transgender people are identification documents. Gender markers (either explicit or inferred from photos or names) on everything from driver’s licenses to birth certificates to Social Security ID’s create constant difficulties—from bureaucratic headaches to legitimate safety concerns—for both transgender and gender non-conforming people.

Now, with the passage of “Voter ID” laws in several states, we can add the basic democratic right to vote to the list of activities that force transgender people to confront substantial institutional, personal, and psychological barriers to something crucial that many others take for granted.

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